Messages - Dixon

Latinlord's first language is Spanish, and he majored in Spanish, so his GPA is not exactly indicative of a superior intellect... Unless you're a complete AA admit I can't imgaine that he would have anything of value to say.

Yea, I took care of all of those things when I got my apartment at the end of May. I was told that you needed to have all of those things done by June 30, but my information might not be accurate. I know that you need to have all of those things in place for six months before you are eligible fo in-state tuition.

You also have to submit a statement of intent to make Arkansas your permanent residence, so those of you planning on leaving right after graduation might not want to be real vocal about that until you get your tuition set.

Just to let yall know a couple of other things I talked to the financial aid guy about... They will not raise the approved personal expenses budget for car or health insurance. I did not think that they would but I figured it did not hurt to ask. They will raise it for the cost of your computer. He told me that they will take care of all of the details when we meet with our advisor or whatever at the fin aid office in the fall.

Another random bit of information. When Josh the assistant dean was giving me a tour of the school he told me that it was important to get your immunization records in to the school. He told me not to send them to him although he gets a couple dozen every year. You should send them to the health center.

You know, if I was smart I would have gotten a furnished apartment and saved myself the trouble of having to haul all my crap halfway across the country. I think you have got a good plan. To be honest, I don't know how much more furnished apartments are. I just never really looked into it. I do know that your choices may be a little more limited if you will only take a furnished apartment.

I don't know how much the Radisson cost as I did not handle the financial details of the trip. Lots of hotels will let you book online so you can check it out pretty quickly.

I just got back from apartment hunting in Fayetteville. There are a lot of apartments available for not much money. However, many, many places do not accept pets and some of the cheaper places are "tax credit" properties, meaning that you can't rent unless you are poor. Law students, or any full time student for that matter, don't qualify as "poor".

I don't have a list of furnished apartments but I remember that there are some available. I only looked at two apartments, the Razorback and the Cliffs II. The Razorback is about a mile from campus and is brand new. One bedrooms start at about $625 and come with a compact washer and dryer with a 13 month lease. You can find their website on the internet pretty easily. I thought that they were nice but they seemed smaller than I had expected there were not a lot of amenities, despite what they had on the internet. You could ride a bike to class very easily from there.

I ended up getting a two bedroom place at the Cliffs II. I think I ended up getting one of the last of two two-bedrooms available but there may be more opening up. There are also one-bedrooms. Two bedrooms start at $600 a month. The place is VERY VERY NICE. Make sure that you go by there even if you decide to rent elsewhere so you can get an idea of what is available for your money. I could not believe the amenities. Of course, what impressed me might not impress you (I liked the great weight room, the two-mile lighted running trail, and the fact that the community sits at the base of a small mountain that I can run my dog up and down every day). It's about a ten minute drive to campus. Just do yourself a favor and check the place out before signing a lease somewhere else.

While you are visiting I would recommend staying at the Radisson downtown. It is the biggest hotel downtown and is within walking distance of just about everything. They also have intenet access in a lot of the rooms (this was useful).

I'm in Fayetteville right now. I picked out an apartment after looking at a couple. I was stunned at how cheap places are around here. And you get a lot for your money.

Fayetteville has grown on me in the last couple of days. The people here are different from my area of the south. Where I am from people are very polite but there is an underlying "formalness" in the way we interact with each other. Here, people are just as friendly but have a midwestern down-to-earth attitude. It's nice.

Fayetteville is a lot smaller than I anticipated and I have found that it does not take long to get around town. Rush hour is virtually non-existant and there is plenty of parking. I got in and out of the DMV is less than 30 minutes and all of the civil-service type people are polite and efficient.

FloridaLaw, since I know that you are very concerned about the USN&WR rankings I discovered something that I think might make you feel better...

Arkansas is currently going through what they call a "diversity initiative" which I have not fully explored but I can only think means that the school is trying to recruit more minorities.

I think that last year the incoming class was over 20% black, or "urm". Now I have to assume that these "urms" probably had sub-150 LSATs or else they would have gone to much better schools.

If a school can have a quarter of it's class with such low LSATs and still "rank" as high as it does says something about the school. When I look around at the minority percentages for other state schools they are much lower. If Arkansas were to recruit fewer minorities I think that they would be "ranked" much higher. Not that anything is wrong with that, just that it does skew the numbers.

"Tiers" in and of themselves mean nothing. What matters is the reputation of the school in the area where you want to practice.

Of course, there may be firms out there that sit around and wait for US News to come out with their rankings before making hiring decisions. I've never hear of that but lots of people on this board seem to believe that's the way things are done.

Talk to attorneys in the region where you want to set up shop and see what they think would be in your best interest.